


Returning And Reunion

by OrmondSacker



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Angst and Feels, Comfort, Comfort/Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Grief/Mourning, Guilt, M/M, Religious Guilt, Survivor Guilt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-29
Updated: 2017-03-29
Packaged: 2018-10-12 15:17:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,527
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10493736
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OrmondSacker/pseuds/OrmondSacker
Summary: Returning to Jedha after five years of absence Baze Malbus finds himself in an Imperial prison cell after a brawl. His cellmate the last person he wants to face.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This is a sequel of sorts to "[Parting Is Such Sweet Sorrow](http://archiveofourown.org/works/10482399)" but is not tagged as a series as it works on its own.
> 
> The idea that Jedha aligned with the CIS during the Clone Wars belongs to paint-the-wall-with-bullets, the rest of the angst and grief in this is entirely my doing.

"Get in there!" The order comes with the curt efficiency Baze have come to expect of Imperial Stormtroopers and delivered in the usual artificial voice of the voice modulator in his helmet. 

When Baze doesn't immediately step forward into the cell, the butt of the Stormtrooper's blaster rifle slams into his back, propelling him forward. He spins on his foot with a silent growl, intending to pounce the soldier never mind how unwise or useless it is, the fire of fury still blazing hot and fierce in this heart, but the door is already sliding shut locking him inside. 

Baze stares at the shut door, his lips stuck in their snarl, chest heaving. He wants to continue fighting but there is no opponent. 

He should never have come back to Jedha. He had know it was a mistake even before he landed here, but the need to pay his respect to his old home and those who had fallen defending  the temple, a need that for years had warred with his shame and sense of failure, had grown too strong.  

So he had come, and found exactly what he had thought he would.  

The buildings that he had once inhabited, that had been his home, tarnished and blackened by fire. Halls that had once been filled with voices and knowledge now rung hollow and empty, the only sound the echoes of his steps, the corridors permeated by oblivion. And there was no trace of those he had once called brothers and sisters, not even of the one he had loved the dearest, to whom he had wedded his life before he became faithless. 

He had thought his anger long since spent, its fire smothered by war and death and loss. But seeing the destruction and the hollowness the devastation had left in its wake, had rekindled the fury in his heart. A group of scavengers, off worlders bent on further desecrating what has once been a hallowed place, had caught his eye and become its target. Until a patrol of Imperial troops had decided to intervene. 

He had been so caught up in battle rage the newly arrived enemies had easily subdued him, which was had landed him in this prison cell. What they further intend to do with him Baze has no idea. And if he was honest, neither does he much care. 

With no light left to him, there no longer seems to be any purpose. 

Exhaling loudly he lets his anger go, it serves no purpose here. 

"So, my hosts saw fit to give me a companion? I would apologize for their manners and the standard in accommodations my friend, but I have very little influence with them I'm afraid." 

The voice of his cellmate, a man he did not noticed when thrown in here, stuns him. He knows it - the light, teasing note; the familiar accent - but it _can't_ be. Even if _H_ _e_ had survived the fall of the Kyber temple, what would he be doing in an Imperial cell? The very same cell Baze is in? 

"The silent type, are you?" the voice continues. "Or is it that you cannot speak? In that case I apologize, a blind man should know better than to fault others for their disabilities." 

Baze listens, frozen in place, back still turned towards the voice, as the man gets to his feet and crosses the few feet that separates them, stopping right behind him. 

Baze finds that he has no voice, no words. He cannot turn around and face this man. Not after he has broken his promises, not with all that he has become 

"Will you let me touch you? Forgive me if the question seems a bit impertinent, but having a cell mate that I cannot see or even hear, is slightly disconcerting." 

His silence is obviously taken as a form of consent. The man finds him unerringly despite his silence. Of course he does, even after he lost his sight he could find Baze unerringly, and puts a hand on his shoulder. Once Baze had been able to find him too, but that ability is lost to now along with so many other things 

"Hmmm, there is something familiar about you my friend. Have we met under these circumstance before?" 

Baze squeezes his eyes shut so he doesn't have to see, wishes he could close his ears as well and not hear, that he was anywhere but here. 

The fingers, strong and bony, examines his shoulder more closely. 

"Hmmm, yes there _is_ something familiar about you. You have made me curious my friend. Unless you object I will touch your face, I want to know who you are." 

Baze doesn't move, feels petrified under the touch, but braces himself for what he expects will come. 

A hand, worn by battles and hard life, so different from the one he used to know, but still heartbreakingly familiar, touches his cheek. 

"Baze."  

When his name falls from Chirrut's lips it is little more than a whispered gasp, a startled sound, mixed with pain. The sound roots Baze even more firmly in his place, all his words locked in his throat. 

He expects a storm. Harsh words about how he never kept his promise to return, accusations for his faithlessness, the lack of connection that he knows that Chirrut must be able to sense in him – it would be no more than he deserves – but nothing comes. 

The hand doesn't move away, but grows gentle, the fingers brushing across his skin, fingertips running through his beard. 

"It _is_ you. Please tell me it is, that this is not another dream." 

"You dreamt of me?" His voice is even lower than Chirrut's, rough and broken with guilt and shame. 

"Always, my husband." 

The words burn him far worse than any amount of recriminations could and rips apart what little composure he has left. Opening his eyes he lays eyes upon Chirrut for the first time in five years. 

Apart from smudges of dirt on his skin, the man haven't changed at all. The same short, straight hair, pale grey blue eyes, and the way he keeps his head slightly turned away to listen to the person he's 'looking' at. Face devoid of lines, though there is a bruise on his temple, and there is a soft, welcoming smile on his lips. 

"The Force brought you back to me in the end, I always knew it would." 

The words make pain and anger bloom again in Baze's chest and words he has kept back for five years, words that were in part the reason he left, so Chirrut would not have to hear them from his mouth, would not have to accept that the man who had sworn his life to his no longer shared his path. Left so that Chirrut would not have to face that pain and in doing so gave him perhaps a much deeper wound. 

"Don't say that. Don't credit the Force," he spits, venom on his tongue.  "It had _nothing_ to do with this." 

"Baze?" There is confusion on Chirrut face and in his voice, and Baze wishes he could make himself stop, but it is far too late for him to turn back now. He should never have come at all. 

"It has caused nothing but grief and harm in this galaxy. It is either uncaring or malicious. Either way, it is not worth following." 

The words shatter what remains of his heart as he speaks them and he squeezes his eyes shut again so he doesn't have to face the consequences of his words. 

Strong hands takes him by the shoulders and holds him with firm kindness. With a curt motion he shakes them off, he does not deserve this affection. 

"Will you let me offer you no solace, my husband?" 

"Don't call me that," Baze says, his voice soft and shattered. "I betrayed you." 

"How?" The word is spoken so gently, but it feels like an earthquake in Baze's world. 

"You know how," he whispers. "You must have... sensed the loss of me, when-" His voice falters and he's unable to get anymore words about his loss of faith over his lips. Though Chirrut has already heard the worst of it he cannot hurt him more. 

There is only silence then, but also a hand that comes to rest lightly on his arm, fingers curling around the biceps. 

"I feared you dead." 

"I am," Baze replies, opening his eyes but pointedly not looking at Chirrut. "The Baze Malbus that left you died in the Clone Wars, I'm not the man I was. Your husband never returned." 

The words burns his tongue, but he says them still. It is necessary that Chirrut understand this. 

"Didn't he?" Chirrut asks softly, that stubborn note in his voice that Baze knows oh so well. "That's strange, I could have sworn I see him right here before me." 

"You can't see a thing, you're blind," Baze snarls, his voice made hard by his own pain. "And in more ways than one it seems." 

"It is you who is blind, my husband. Do you think I am the same that I was when you left. After all that has happened. Do you even know what happened here?" 

He didn't, not nearly enough. That the leaders of Jedha had in the end aligned with the Separatist, he knew that, and that the Separatists for some reason had attacked the temple. And all the while he had been busy fighting for them, for the very people who were razing his home to the ground. Because he thought that was the right side, because he thought that that was where the Force was guiding him to go, listening to what little faith in it he had had left and it had left him with blood on his hands. 

By the time he heard the news it had grown old and the temple already in ruins, occupied by battle droids.  

"I should have been here," he says. "I should have been here." 

"I am glad you wasn't. Had you been I doubt you would have relented against the battle droids and I truly would have lost you." 

"You don't know-" 

"That you fought for the Separatists?" Chirrut interrupts. "Where else would you have gone? After all that Jedha and the other planets out here had suffered at the hands of the Senate I could not see you support the Republic, no matter our ties to the Jedi." 

Chirrut's tone is gentle, even warm, but it feels to Baze like an accusation. The deep feeling of shame that he has been fighting off since he first heard of the temple's fall, the illogical belief that he has the blood of his brothers and sisters on his hands.  

Greif wells up in his chest and he starts shaking from head till toe. Chirrut grabs hold of him and pulls him into a tight embrace, one he refuses to release even when Baze tries to push him away. In the end Baze yields, he doesn't have the strength to fight anymore, doesn't even have the strength to stand. 

Chirrut doesn’t try to hold them up, but gently lowers them both to the ground, holding on to Baze as he continues to shake, tenderly caressing Baze's shoulders and back. Not even when the trembling stops does he let go, only shift to make both of them a bit more comfortable on the hard duracreet floor. 

"Do you think the Republic side would have served you better?" Chirrut asks after the silence had lasted so long Baze was beginning to wonder if either of them would speak again. "It was what gave rise to our 'beloved  Empire' after all and killed those who were once our allies. Who are now destroying Jedha." There is a hardness in Chirrut's voice that Baze has never before heard and doesn't know how to interpret. 

"So you're saying that I was on the right side?" 

"I'm saying that I don't think that there was a _right_ side." If not for that hardness Baze might have taken Chirrut's words as an attempt to console him, but it's clear that there's far more than that to them. 

"So what was the solution?" 

Chirrut is silent for a moment as if either considering, or picking his words. He still holds Baze close so baze can't see the expression on his face. 

"To chose the path we saw as doing the most good. And to then do as much good on it as we could." 

Baze silently shakes his head. "Even then I failed. How many are dead by my hand that would have lived?" 

"And how many lives now because you were there?" Chirrut counters. 

Baze lets out a huffing laugh, unable to not feel a certain mirth. 

"In this you have not changed. You are as stubborn as ever and you never give up." 

"I always could out argue master Wo." 

"Only through sheer tenacity." 

"If the tactic is successful?" 

Baze pulls back enough to see Chirrut's face, needs to see him now. 

He wears that small, playful smile Baze knows oh so well. In that one moment it's as if nothing at all has changed. Baze runs a hand over Chirrut's cheek and the smile softens, becomes welcoming and affectionate. 

The smile fills Baze's chest with an odd feeling that he doesn't want to name, fearing it will destroy it, is beginning to form. A feeling that reminds him of the peace of the Kyber caves, the quiet joy of the songs of worship he can no longer make himself sing, of the faces and voices of friends.  

A feeling that says, welcome home. 

Perhaps that was why he had not felt it when he first landed, even among the ruins there had been no echo of this. Home was no longer a place to him, it has become a person. Or maybe it always was. 

It doesn't matter, this is where he belongs and he was a fool to ever leave. 

The accusatory voices of his conscience and the roar of his anger that have dogged his steps and haunted his dreams for years does not grow silent, but they sound faint and far-off in this moment, Chirrut's smile an insulation from their harsh chastigations and burning rages. 

"Chirrut." Baze lets his tongue form the name that he haven't spoken in five years, relishing its sound on his tongue. 

Chirrut's smile widen. 

"Welcome home, my husband." 

Part of Baze wants to protest again, but has already said all the words that he can on this, all the ones he has in him. If those are not enough for Chirrut to turn away from him, nothing else that he can say or do ever will. He knows the man he married well enough on this by now and however much Chirrut too has changed, his stubborn determination clearly has not. 

So instead of arguing Baze allows his husband to pull him into his arms again and rest his head on Chirrut's shoulder, finding solace for the first time in years. 


End file.
